Decline of Unions
Goodyear Versus Unionization
By D.W.

American tire maker Goodyear is one of the worlds largest tire manufacturers with revenue of $19.7 billion in 2005 and about 100 plants in 29 countries. But unlike most American legacy companies, it is still somewhat committed to manufacturing in this country. Goodyear’s premier plant is located in Lawton Oklahoma, which also hosts the army base of Ft. Sill.

The Lawton site is reputed not only to be the company’s best plant but it is one of the most productive factories in the world producing around 60,000 tires a day. However, what is more interesting is that it is also one of three of Goodyear’s non-union plants. This annoys the hell out of labor unions because unionized employees are supposed to be more productive and happier because the union is taking care of them. Incidentally, unionized plants were consistently being outperformed by the Lawton factory whose workers didn’t have the benefit of union protection.

In 2003, the United Steel Workers Union had a one shot 90 day opportunity to unionize the Lawton Goodyear plant and they failed.

I was at school in Lawton during that time and my human resources professor had a unique consulting job of advising companies on defeating unionization efforts in the region. He was also involved in the Goodyear fight and he gave us the real scoop about the battle between Goodyear and the Steel Workers Union. I also talked to a lot of factory workers who openly shared their opinions about the effort whether they were pro-union or anti-union.

To be fair, many of the Goodyear employees in Lawton are retired military and they already enjoy free health care and a good retirement check. The Goodyear job financed their big bass boats and ridiculously large pick-ups. The union really had little to offer these workers who were very content. But even the employees who weren’t retired military still enjoyed a good quality of life as the cost of living in southwest Oklahoma is very low and the local Army base was the only other employer that could offer more money.
 

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The people in the region were also staunchly conservative and prefer to manage their own lives and careers without the advice of experts. As a result, the Steel Workers Union never really stood a chance in this battle.

Now Oklahoma, like most of the South, is a right to work state, meaning that no employee can be forced to join a union. Many Northern states have compulsory laws requiring workers to be unionized whether they want to or not and the union collects their dues directly from the workers’ paycheck. I don’t now about you but that sounds like fascism to me; why should anyone be compelled to join what should be a voluntary association?

However, since the Goodyear plant was private property in a right to work state the company was able to ban union organizers from the plant. But in 2003 Goodyear entered negotiations with the Steel Workers Union to close down a non-productive plant and in return, the union had 90 days of unfettered access to try to unionize the Lawton plant. The Steel Workers Union jumped at the chance and sent down their big guns.

The union organizers had to convince a certain majority of workers to join the union and if they met that number, the plant would be unionized. Of course the workers who didn’t want to join wouldn’t be legally compelled to become a member but they would face peer pressure over the long haul.

Right from the beginning, the union covertly had unionized workers from other plants transfer to Lawton to act as clandestine organizers in an effort to influence plant employees to unionize. Doesn’t that sound like a trick right out of the Soviet playbook?

For a worker to vote for unionization, they had to fill out a union card although some employees were slyly duped into registering. For instance, some of the workers I talked to explained that they were not told exactly what signing the card meant and when they found out they were furious. They demanded that they union organizers return the card, which they naturally didn’t want to do. A local legal firm offered pro bono help to file all kinds of lawsuits against the union on behalf of the plant workers and the issue was dropped.

The union organizers also attempted low level scare tactics. They had people tail my professor and other key anti-union consultants, which is kind of creepy. Nothing came of this and they would have been really stupid to challenge the local authorities by executing vandalism or making overt threats.

One interesting tactic that my professor used was to research the union organizers themselves and he discovered how much they were being paid. The lead organizer was making $90,000 while the second in charge made about $60,000 and the lowest paid guy was pulling in around $30,000 which was very good money in that part of the country. He then made posters with this information and placed them around the plant. The workers were shocked to hear this news. They started to question whether or not their union dues would also be spent on fat salaries for union executives. Unions are supposed to be nonprofit organizations but they certainly acted like for profit companies.

The management also made references to the union’s alleged ties to organized crime in the Northeast by passing out news articles and other documents. They also publicized the union’s well known staunch support for the Democratic Party and other Liberal groups. People from Lawton are very conservative and they genuinely found these union activities to be both disturbing and repulsive.

In the end the Steel Workers Union failed because the plant employees realized that the union really didn’t have anything valuable to offer them except another way to lose money. The workers and the people of Lawton didn’t like what the Steel Workers Union represented culturally and politically.

But in all honesty, the union failed because it was at heart a bankrupt organization that can ultimately only survive by manipulating people and coercing politicians. If every state in the U.S. had a right to work law, then how long would the unions really last? In the age of globalization are unions helping or hurting the American blue collar worker?

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